"Who is it wants me?" she repeated, and catching sight of me stood
regarding me in some surprise, not unfriendly, waiting for me to explain
myself. But before I could find my tongue the man in pink answered her
with his soft drawl:
"Mademoiselle, this is a minister plenipotentiary and envoy
extraordinary--most extraordinary--from the court of his Highness the
Comte de Mar."
"Oh, that is it!" she cried with a little laugh, but not, I think, at my
uncouthness, though she looked me over curiously.
"He has not come himself, M. de Mar?"
"It appears not, mademoiselle."
She did not seem vastly disconcerted for all she cried in doleful tones:
"Alack! alack! I have lost. And Paul is not present to enjoy his
triumph. He wagered me a pair of pearl-broidered gloves that I could not
produce M. de Mar."
"But it is not his fault," I answered her, eagerly. "It is not M. de
Mar's fault, mademoiselle. He has been hurt to-day, and he could not
come. He is in bed of his wounds; he could not walk across his room. He
tried. He bade me lay at mademoiselle's feet his lifelong services."
"Ah, Lorance!" cried a young demoiselle in a sky-coloured gown,
"methinks you have indeed lost M. de Mar if he sends you no better
messenger of his regrets than this horse-boy."
"I have lost the gloves, that is certain and sad," Mlle. de Montluc
replied, as if the loss of the wager were all her care. "I am punished
for my vanity, mesdames et messieurs. I undertook to produce my recreant
squire and I have failed. Alas!" And she put up her white hands before
her face with a pretty imitation of despair, save that her eyes sparkled
from between her fingers.
By this time the gamesters about us had stopped their play, in a general
interest in the affair. An older lady coming forward with an air of
authority demanded:
"What is this disturbance, Lorance?"
"A wager between me and my cousin Paul, madame," she answered with
instant gravity and respect.
"Paul de Lorraine! Is he here?" the other asked, unpleased, I thought.
"Yes, madame. He dropped from the skies on us this afternoon. He is out
of the house again now."
"But while he was in the house," quoth she in sky-colour, "though he did
not find time to pay his respects to Mme. la Duchesse, he had the
leisure for considerable conversation with Mlle. de Montluc."
The other lady, whom I now guessed to be the Duchesse de Mayenne
herself, turned somewhat sharply on her cousin of Montluc.
"I do not yet hear your excuses, mademoiselle, for the introduction of a
stable-boy into my salon."
"I beg you to believe, madame, I am not responsible for it," she
protested. "Paul, when he was here, saw fit to rally me concerning M. de
Mar. Mlle. de Tavanne informed him of the count's defection and they
were pleased to be merry with me over it. I vowed I could get him back
if I wished. The end of the matter was that I wrote a letter which my
cousin promised to have conveyed to M. le Comte's old lodgings. This is
the answer," mademoiselle cried, with a wave of her hand toward me. "But
I did not expect it in this guise, madame. Blame your lackeys who know
not their duties, not me."
"I blame you, mademoiselle," Mme. de Mayenne answered her, tartly. "I
consider my salon no place for intrigues with horse-boys. If you must
hold colloquy with this fellow, take him whither he belongs--to the
stables."
A laugh went up among those who laugh at whatever a duchess says.
"Come, mesdames, we will resume our play," she added to the ladies who
had followed her on the scene, and turned her back in lofty disdain on
Mlle. de Montluc and her concerns. But though some of the company obeyed
her, a curious circle still surrounded us.
"Dame! if you must be banished to the stables, we all will go,
mademoiselle," declared the pink gallant. "We all want news of the
vanished Mar."
"Indeed we do. We have missed him sorely. And I dare swear this
messenger's account will prove diverting," lisped the sky-coloured
demoiselle.
I was not enjoying myself. I had given all my hopes of glory to be out
in the street again. I wished Mlle. de Montluc would take me to the
stables--anywhere out of this laughing company. But she had no such
intent.
"I think madame does not mean her sentence," she rejoined. "I would not
for the world frustrate your curiosity, Blanche; nor yours, M. de
Champfleury. Tell us what has befallen your master, Sir Courier."
"He has been in a duel, mademoiselle."
"Whom was he fighting?"
"And for what lady's favour?"
"Is it a pretty Huguenot this time?"
"Does she make him read his Bible?"
"Or did her big brother set on him for a wicked papist?"
The questions chorussed upon me; I saw they were framed to tease
mademoiselle. I answered as best I might:
"He thinks of no lady but Mlle. de Montluc. The fight was over other
matters. I am only told to say M. le Comte regrets most heartily that
his wound prevents his coming, and to assure mademoiselle that he is too
weak and faint to walk across the floor."
"Then exceed your instructions a little. Tell us what monsieur has been
about these four weeks that he could not take time to visit us."
I was in a dilemma. I knew she was M. Étienne's chosen lady and
therefore deserving of all fealty from me; yet at the same time I could
not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment and no intent of
rudeness that caused my short answer:
"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."
"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set soldierly
fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had never left my
face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this insolence."
"M. de Brie--" she began at the same moment that I cried out to her:
"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added, in my
haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees for herself
that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this house."
Brie had me by the collar.
"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I thought
as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this house, then, nom
de dieu, they are no secret."
He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me, till my
teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would. But he cried
on, his voice rising with excitement:
"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has been
about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man,
forsooth--neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was Henry's, fast
and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so. I told Mayenne last
month we ought to settle with M. de St. Quentin; I asked nothing better
than to attend to him. But the general would not, but let him alone,
free and unmolested in his work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too--"
He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been
pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had
entered the room.
M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the passage. I
turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.
He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked, heavy-jowled. His
wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was lightest brown, while
his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark. His eyes were dark also, his
full lips red and smiling. He had the beauty and presence of all the
Guises; it needed not the star on his breast to tell me that this was
Mayenne himself.
He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company, but his
glance travelling straight to me and my captor.
"What have we here, François?"
"This is a fellow of Étienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie answered. "He
came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am getting out of him
what Mar has been up to since he disappeared a month back."
"You are at unnecessary pains, my dear François; I already know Mar's
whereabouts and doings rather better than he knows them himself."
Brie dropped his hand from my collar, looking by no means at ease. I
perceived that this was the way with Mayenne: you knew what he said but
you did not know what he thought. His somewhat heavy face varied little;
what went on in his mind behind the smiling mask was matter for anxiety.
If he asked pleasantly after your health, you fancied he might be
thinking how well you would grace the gallows.